


Oogie

by SedofRan



Category: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Genre: How he came to be, Like the book Wicked, Not evil, Oogie Boogie's Past
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-05-19 04:31:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5953714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SedofRan/pseuds/SedofRan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before becoming the bag of bugs that we know him as today, Oogie started off having his own humanoid body.Oogie’s one wish is to be Pumpkin King, just like his rival, Jack. Every Hallow’s Eve (Halloween) he is forced to stay on the moon and away from the action, for the townspeople fear that, if allowed to roam freely, he would cause a catastrophe. Due to his appearance not being as intimidating as others, he must rely on his brains and inventions (Which he is quite good at making due to the fact that he makes his own gambling equipment to feed his “obsession”). The people of HalloweenTown fear his new and eccentric ideas, which leads to them denying him much action during their cherished night. <br/>After witnesses a group of trick or treaters one Hallow’s Eve, Oogie gets an idea for a new invention, which, combined with another side effect of his bugs, will eventually lead to his ultimate downfall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Tap-Tap._

My dice rolled to a stop, their pair of snake eyes staring up at me. I heaved a heavy sigh before picking them up again. I rubbed my thumb across them. Two more rolls.

I tossed the dice again, listening to their clatter as they rolled to a stop once again. I nibbled on my bottom lip. Beyond belief, a pair of snake eyes were once again showed on the red surface of the dice. One more roll.

This isn’t like me. I have gambled before many, many times. Some might even say that I have a bit of a problem with it, but aside from a few games, it was always just little, trivia things. I have never wagered my life. Never my own.

On a few occasions, I would take my dice, which were always dangling from my left ear for easy access, and roll to see what choice I should make. It always helps in tough situations to leave everything up to a game of chance. Deciding whether to make pumpkin radish stew or spider leg casserole just takes a simple roll of the dice. But this isn’t deciding what to make, nor is it something to be taken lightly. With one last roll of the dice…

I shake my head. No. I brought this upon myself. If fate decides that this is the best way to deal with me, then so be it. I have tied up what loose ends that I could, in the best ways that I could. Now there is only one last loose end left; me.

How could my life have come to this? How could I have reached the point in my life where I am wagering myself on a pair of dice roll?

The road that lead me to this started the day I was formed, but I guess a more accurate time would be two Hollow’s Eves ago. That was the day that my steady downfall truly gained momentum and my final days bean their countdown.

I brought the dice up to my face. I scan over them for a few seconds before parting my lips and blowing on them. I’m not sure what I am hoping for. Do I want to win or do I want to fail? Snake eyes or no? I nibbled on my bottom lip again, piercing it with my sharp fang. Luckily, this body has been dead for years. I can feel no pain, nor warmth of a touch, as if that really mattered anyway.

If only things could have turned out differently. If only the hand of fate could have been swayed. With that thought, I closed my eyes and let the die fall from my fingers. Everything slowed down for me as I counted down until the sound of them clattering against the tabletop. I thought back to that Hallows’ Eve.

I remember it like it was only yesterday.


	2. Chapter 2

“Only a few more hours left!” the mayor shouted, his joyful face on for once. He rode upon his carriage and shouted into his megaphone. “In just a little more time, Hallow’s Eve will begin!”

The crowd cheered, thrusting their fists into the air. I couldn’t help but flinch at the loud noise and shrink away from the audience, covering my face slightly with my long, green sleeve. This wouldn’t do much, seeing as my suite only was enough identification for me. Luckily, since I was in the back, no one bothered to turn their eyes to me. Why did I even bother coming today? I should have stayed in my tree, but I had hoped…

“Now introducing this year’s, and the past hundred years prior, Pumpkin King: Jack Skellington!” I clenched my hands into fists as the Mayor stepped aside to let the mentioned bag of bones to stand in his previous place. Oh how I loathe that Jack Skellington.

Jack Skellington was around my age, maybe a little older by a decade or two. He certainly was a great deal taller, towering over me by nearly a foot. He wasn’t an entire skeleton. He was nearly a rotting corpse, though his remaining flesh, grey with a blue tint, was no longer rotting. The only part that still had his original flesh was the top section of his head, from the upper lip and up, and his neck. From what I could tell, the rest was just bone, though most of his body was covered by his black and white suit. From the top of his head, silvery hair cascaded down, tangled without a care. The good thing about being dead in Halloween Town is that nothing grows. Your hair is as it always will be unless it is taken away. Lucky. Lucky.

That bag of bones had that boastful smirk on his face as he raised his arms in the air. “For the last hundred years, I have been leading us through Hallow’s Eve after Hallow’s Eve! Oh the screams and the shrieks that we have heard. Oh the terror that we have induced! How teeth chatteringly exuberating!”

All around me, people were cooing for Jack. They shouted his name and sang out praises. I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. It is not like he is even that great. I would be twice the scarier that he was if I could only get the chance to show my stuff. So my methods are a little more extreme and unorthodox. It is not like I plan on killing anyone. And who ever heard of someone being scared to death literally anyway?

“And I have no doubt in my mind that this year will be the best one yet! I have a million brand new ideas that will really make them scream!” Jack cackled and the others joined in. I scoffed at this and rolled my eyes once more. Apparently, I did this a little too loud and I attracted the attention of those around me, who scowled at my appearance.

“Oogie Buggie is here,” one of them whispered to the other. Soon enough, news had spread throughout the entire audience and the eyes were no longer on Jack, but upon me. Don’t get me wrong, some attention from these people would be nice, if it were the same as that which they give Jack, but their cold eyes stared at me and left me with a feeling of utter dread.

“Buggie,” Jack said, hopping down from the carriage and striding towards me. The crowd parted for him, giving him a clear view of me.

I scowled at him. “Don’t call me that,” I muttered. Jack’s smirk grew.

“Why are you here, Buggie?” he asked, completely ignoring my request to bot be called as such. Like I need to be reminded over and over again that, under my sewn-together skin, I am just a mass of squirming bugs. “I don’t see why you need to be here. You already know your part in the festives; same as last year.”

“Well, I thought that, maybe this year, I could do a bit more,” I suggested, trying to block out the whispers that my statement had arose in the crowds. “I thought that I could stray from the moon. Be more than ‘the shadow on a moonlit night. Ya know. Just a little… something more.”

“More?” I hate when they look at me like that. Especially when that dratted Jack Skellington did it. “Why, you can’t do more, Buggie. You know the rules with you. You stay in the shadows and on the moon. That is the way that it has always been, Buggie, and that is how it has to be. You know that.”

“Don’t call me ‘Buggie’,” I insisted again. I rolled my long sleeve up to reveal my pale, light grey, hands. I ran them through the locks of dark hair that had fallen over my eyes. “Maybe, if I were allowed to participate, I could show you guys how great Halloween really can be. Maybe… someone else could be the next Pumpkin King?” I gave Jack my signature impish grin.

Jack laughed, crossing his lankly arms over his chest. “And who would that be? You?”

I said nothing, but apparently that was answer enough. The crowd around me burst out in whispers and chuckles Jack himself let out an inhuman giggle, cackling at me. “You? Buggie the Pumpkin King?” Jack shook his head at me. “You know that can never happen. You are to stay on the moon and scare those who look to it for escape from us on the ground.”

“But you have never given me the chance. Maybe my ideas would improve it for everyone.”

Jack’s smile began to fade. “Your ideas are too extreme, Buggie. We want to scare the people, not kill them.”

I scowled. “We don’t know that it would kill anyone. Please. If you would just give me the chance, I could-”

“Buggie, you can’t-”

“-change everything for everyone. I could really put the fear into their hearts. Just let me off-”

“-be trusted to mingle with the people.”

“-the moon for just once. If I could just try some of my ideas, you will all see that I can help. I can do great things and maybe even be the next Pumpkin-”

“Buggie!” Jack shouted, interrupting me and sending the whole crowd to silence. “Stay. On. Your. Moon.” With that being said, Jack turned away from me and marched off, his shoulders hunched and back stiff. No one said a thing for the longest of times as he departed.

“Can you believe he tried that?” I hear someone finally whisper, though I am not sure who it was. “You would have thought that he would have given up by now.”

I cast my eyes to the ground. This wasn’t the first time that I had brought this up, and if I have anything to say about it, it won’t be the last either. Deciding that I had had enough of the gossip and the odd looks, I made my way out of the town square.

Beyond the town gates and the graveyard I wandered. Pass the withering trees of the dead forest and the pumpkin patches. Within no time, I had reached my destination. The only place where the likes of me was welcome: the old hollow tree. Home sweet home.


	3. Chapter 3

I sat on one of the higher branches of my tree. I heaved a sigh as I stared up at the pumpkin moon, fiddling with the wrench in my hand as I awaited inspiration. I am a sort of inventor, one might say. Since the others don’t approve of my… gambling ways… I had to learn how to make all sort of machines for myself. So far, I had only made a few small ones. I doubted that I could handle the mechanics of the larger machines that I have seen in the human world, especially since this is a “learn-as-I-went” sort of skill. Maybe if I had a teacher, but such a thing is but a dream that cannot be.

Halloween would be here soon, I thought to myself as the wrench continued to make its way through my fingers. Just like every other before it, I would be forced to stay fa from mortal man and scare them from the moon, least I do something that will, in the words of the others, “take the joy too far and end up killing those whom have no chance against the true strength of us.” Perhaps they are right, in some aspects. Looking back on some of my previous ideas, quite a few, as I see now, were much too much for the likes of the living humans. They will still so inexperienced, having not yet discovered the majesty of gears and inventions farther than that of their wheels and wagons.

Perhaps some of my past plans and inventions were wrong, but one cannot make an omelet without cracking a few eggs. If I had seen such horrid results from my inventions and plans, then surely I would have stopped, given up on it, and moved on to better things that were more suited to the likes of the mortals. How did any of them ever hope to improve if they dared not try? No. That wasn’t correct. They were able to try, fail, and learn with each passing year, for they were not deterred. They could try new screams, new ways of lurking and creeping, and new ways to draw terror. It was I who was always deterred; always told “No, Buggie”.

I hated that name; Buggy. Bringing my hand up to my face, I touch the grey skin that concealed what I truly was. This face was not my own, nor was this body. It was a borrowed piece. Or perhaps it wasn’t. I just remember it, so perhaps it was always mine. Or perhaps I got it long ago, for I remember not the beginning of my days. The farthest back that I could go was a good hundred years or so back. The years of the same thing have just stacked themselves upon me in a way that I find it hard to determine which day came before or after another. Either way, it wasn’t living flesh, nor was it truly me.

I could control every muscle and it felt just like any other person would feel in their own skin, or so I assumed, but, unlike others, I have not organs, bones, or blood beneath the dead and stitched flesh. Beneath, I hold my nick-namesake.

Squirming and wriggling bugs and one black-and-white striped snake that served as my tongue. They were there, constantly moving about and sometimes even whispering to each other. They were me and I was them. Everyone knew of it. Luckily, people in Halloween Town do not discriminate for such things. With that being said, they are still willing to make fun of it if the person in particular is someone that they care not for, such as I.

Thus, to them, Oogie Boogie became simply Buggie; the “crazed bag of bugs with an addiction and no clue as to when to stop”.

I sigh heavily, letting the wrench slide from my fingers and fall to the ground below. It doesn’t matter where it landed, for I would simply retrieve it later when I so desired. This whole area was my home, for I never cared for the houses of stone and mortar that the others in town so much enjoyed. I believe it is because of what I am and my lack of enjoyment of being in anything that resembled a cage of any sort. Instead, I had a large dead oak, much too big to be cut down, which saved it from becoming a home to another graveyard. Sometimes I spend the night in slumber on the thick branches, other times in a small nook in the trunk. More often than not, I would sleep in the only room I had, which was a large, hollowed area halfway up the trunk. Inside I had my tools and inventions, which I typically fell in slumber while working late on them.

“Buggie?” a familiar voice called up to him. He didn’t need to look down to see that it was the great “Pumpkin King” himself. “Buggie!” Jack called up to him again.

“I don’t respond to that name,” I shouted back, closing my eyes and covering them with my green sleeve.

“Buggie!” Jack shouted again. “You seem to have dropped your wrench down here. Do you want me to get it back up to you?”

“Just leave it, Jack,” I muttered. “I will get it later, when I have need of it again.”

Jack was silent, though I didn’t bother to hope that the other had decided to go away. After a few minutes, I could hear the grunting of Jack climbing up his tree to him, for I had lifted the robe ladder that I had used to get up and it was wrapped around the branch I was resting on.

Jack slumped on the branch, letting out a deep breath of air as he pulled himself up enough to get comfortable on it. “You could have dropped the ladder for me, you know,” he stated, tossing the wrench my way.

“What is it that you want, Skelington?” I hissed, avoiding looking at him by tracing the lines of the bark with my eyes. Jack sighed, ruffling his grey hair as he scooted closer.

“Look, Oogie,” he started to say, “you bring this down upon yourself. Every time you try to get us to agree to let you join in, you set yourself up to be denied and left to drown in self-pity in your… humble home.”

“I’m not drowning in self-pity,” I insisted.

“What I am trying to tell you, as your friend, is that you need to learn your place.” Jack patted his jacket pocket, making sure his most precious had not fallen during his climb. “We all have a part to play in all of this and yours is not on the ground with the rest of us. Don’t you understand?”

“Why don’t you try to understand how it feels to be in my situation?” I hissed back, turning his eyes upon the Pumpkin King for the first time since the incident in the town square “How would you feel if you were told to smother all of your raw potential and stay on a bloody moon, unable to join in with the merriment because of _if’s_ and _maybe’s_? No Pumpkin King for you. No true Halloween for you. Nothing.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Now you are just being dramatic. It isn’t that bad.”

“How would you know?” I stood from my perch and climbed further into the tree. “You know nothing, yet you are the one who stands in my way the most.”

“I do it to protect the mortals,” Jack explained, giving pursuit, “and I do it to protect you. What would happen if your inventions and ideas actually did harm someone? What would you do? What would the people do? It is for the best of all if you just do as you are told and stay out of the way.”

I didn’t respond. I just continued to go up until I reached my workshop. Once inside, I immediately went over to my work desk and began to fiddle with a jumble of gears and other metal pieces. I didn’t know what this invention would be, but sometimes the mystery is better than the plan, for at least then there is a little surprise and difference in this dull, mundane life. I could hear Jack’s high class shoes tapping against the floor as he drew closer.

“What are you working on now?” Jack asked, sounding genuinely interested in the project that I was tinkering with. “Doesn’t look like much currently.”

“Great things usually don’t,” I answered. “It is still in its beginning phases. Not even I, its creator, know what it will be. It is full of untapped potential.” I dared to eye Jack’s form for a split second before darting my eyes back to the mechanics in my hands.

“No plan?” Jack quirked an eyebrow. “That isn’t like you.”

“Maybe it is. Maybe you just don’t know me as well as you think that you do.”

“Perhaps.” Everything fell into silence. The only sound to be heard were my tools as they tapped the gears into place or the clanging of metal as I tried to see if any other pieces would fit better than the other. The silence weighed heavy on me as I was hoping beyond hope that Jack would call this meeting to an end and leave peacefully.

But, alas, this was never the case with Jack Skelington.

Jack coughed loudly into his hand and shifted his eight from foot to foot. “Sammy has been whispering in my ear and she thinks that, just maybe, we could allow you to have a bigger part in the celebrations."

My hands froze and my workings fell from my limp fingers. I was sure that, if I owned one, my heart would have been thudding in my chest. With wide eyes, I turned to face Jack, barely able to hide my delight. For the first time in my entire life, I found myself thanking that blasted doll: Sammy.

She now hung just out of the folds of Jack’s suit jacket, as limp as any other doll would be. Her skin was blue and her hair long and chocolatey. Adorned upon her body was a dress made from multiple swatches of cloth. Sammy, as she is called for now, was an odd thing to say the least. It was an even odder thing to see on the great Jack Skelington, though she was a common thing to be seen by now. The doll held no real powers and could not come to life unlike some other trinkets that lived in Halloween Town with them. She was a doll, found in a pumpkin patch by Jack long ago.

Jack stroked her head, as if this actually did anything to please the doll. “Sammy, no…. maybe that isn’t the right name for her. I am thinking something girlier now. I believe that Sandy is more of an appropriate name for her.” Jack shook his head. “Either way, she thought about what you said and told me that I really should try to get you more involved. I mean, we all do have certain rights to this hallowed event.”

“Really?” I leap to my feet and dashed to the other side of the room. I ripped a dirty piece of parchment which I had tacked to the wall, before retrieving a handful of clean pieces and chunks of charcoal. I made my way back to Jack and slammed the supplies onto the workbench, shifting everything else out of the way. “I was thinking that we could do something to the candy that they get. Nothing poisonous, of course, but imagine the looks of terror on their faces when they suck on a Honeydew Caramel Drop and suddenly there is a spider crawling around in their mouth! Brilliant, right?” I pointed to sections of the dirt parchment, highlighting specific areas of my blueprints. “But that is just the beginning. We could make some candies that the spiders would eat in a matter of seconds. We could put a whole egg sack of them in it and put it in someone’s bag or candy bowl. Then the spiders would just explode out and scare their socks right off.” I sketched out a few things on the blank pages with the chunk of charcoal. “After that, we could-”

“Stop!” Jack shouted. I fell into silence, my smile disappearing with my voice. “I didn’t mean like that, Oogie. Sandy and I were thinking more along the lines of you helping out with the production line here in town, or maybe I can get a few others to agree to send some of the mortals’ eyes your way. Little baby steps.”

“Baby steps?” I scoffed. “Do I look like a baby to you? Why is it that all of you can run into action and I alone must be lucky to get to take baby steps? Why must I be punished when I have done no wrong?”

“No one said that you have done wrong. And this isn’t a punishment, but a precaution.”

“Precaution? I haven’t done anything. How do you know that I will do wrong if I have never done wrong before in my life?”

Jack sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We know because we can see the signs, Buggie. Look of this plan right here, for example.” Jack gestured to the blueprints laid out before him. “What if something went wrong? What if there was an allergy or an overdose? What if the spiders went down instead of up?”

“I would monitor everything,” I insisted. “There wouldn’t be a chance of anything going wrong. I could even make the spiders taste good, in case they don’t leave the mouth. You should know by now my skills in cookery.”

“That is that, and this is this.” Jack moved away from the table, his long limbs taking him closer and closer to the exit. “We keep trying to tell you. There are things that just can’t be done.”

“And I keep trying to tell you that it isn’t fair!” I slammed my fist down on my workbench, scattering the pieces of charcoal and paper, and fell into my chair. “You never had to do anything. From the moment you could squeal, you were out on the frontlines while I was tossed onto the moon like some unwanted bother. I used to watch you, Jack, and every other ghoul that got to scare the mortals on Hallow’s Eve, but I knew I could never do that. I don’t look terrifying. My skin is nicely sewn together to keep my bugs in and I can’t ever take off my suit. I don’t have the looks to be intimidating. I’m not like you.” I leaned my head against my hand and flicked some charcoal bits away from me. “All I have are my ideas. If I could just one be able to try my best, like the rest of you, and get to see true horror on someone’s face, then that would be enough to last me the rest of my life. Just once.”

Jack glanced over his shoulder at me, and I, in return, refused to look back at him. “Maybe…” he muttered, “maybe you aren’t meant to be on the front lines.”

The silence that fell afterwards lasted long after Jack had left.


End file.
